Tag Archives: Courtney

I flew past the hotel, a thirty-three-floor needle of mirrored glass that stood near a parking structure to its left and a rust colored 19th century building to its right—though a path that led to an old bridge stood between them.

I might be ready to disappear to an alternate world, but maybe I could do something.

Shadow and Voice led me over to the locker rooms to change. If you’re imagining a futuristic locker room, stop.

It looked like the locker room of every high school sports team in the United States—rows of toilet stalls with metal dividers for privacy. A roomful of metal lockers for each person on the team and wooden benches for people to sit. The far end of the room opened into a tiled room with showers.

I read the names on the lockers—Accelerando, Captain Commando, The Mystic, The Rocket, Storm King and the others—realizing, “There’s only one locker room?”

Loosening my choke hold, I dropped to the ground, putting Lucas body in the center of the wards Samita had set up on the floor. The Thing That Eats’ head had disappeared, revealing Lucas’ face.

As he lay on the concrete between black lines and symbols that I didn’t recognize, I reminded myself that he had to be alive. I’d choked him correctly, and I’d timed it. The Thing That Eats had a talent for playing on people’s fears. My longstanding one was that I’d kill somebody who didn’t deserve it, and he’d done his best to play on it. Continue reading Revelations: Part 8→

I waited to see what would happen, but after a few minutes, Jeremy texted me, writing, “J’s talking to cops. I’m riding along. You can go home.”

I typed back, “OK,” told everyone what was going on, and drove back to the dorms.

After we got back to the university, we all walked together back to the dorm. After we got there, Caleb and Gabriel walked off toward their own rooms. Courtney hung around with Haley, Camille and me in my room for about an hour after that, talking through everything we’d wished we could have said to each other back in the van. Continue reading Intrusion: Part 1→

I swallowed. I’d met a woman who used eagle themed powered armor. She’d been a professional mercenary who worked for Rook directly, and indirectly the Nine. She’d been in Rook’s headquarters when we broke in to rescue Cassie. I’d assumed that she’d survived the headquarters blowing up, but hadn’t expected to see her again.

We pushed our way back to the van, leaving and undoubtedly violating laws about staying at the scene of a crime in the process. I wasn’t sure how many heard the first part of the conversation, but there were a lot of people at the end.

Of course, that was when Kid Biohack was there. Back when it was Alden and Jillian talking, it wouldn’t have appeared to be anything more than normal conversation since he’d been out of costume.

In the background, I heard Courtney continue. “His text said that he was corralling everyone else.”

Jillian stood a little taller than Haley, and she’d braided her hair—which went halfway down her back. Just like the last time I’d seen her, she wore a flannel shirt over a t-shirt.

Courtney backed in as Jillian stepped inside—Jeremy and I didn’t have a particularly large room. We each had a closet on either side of the door, forcing everyone to move into the main area of the room, and stand next to our bunks and the desks. Jeremy’s was covered with a mixture of physics textbooks, science fiction paperbacks, old anime DVD’s, and books about conspiracy theories. Except for my laptop and the textbooks I couldn’t get as ebooks, mine was nearly empty.

Courtney pulled out Jeremy’s chair as Haley sat on my desk. Jillian and I stood in the middle of the room next to the bunk beds.

All of this meant that I couldn’t ask Haley anything about the power juice. The big questions being whether Jillian had some on her or whether she’d already drunk it or what? Continue reading Precision: Part 5→

When I opened up the pictures on my laptop, it was the speedster I’d seen first—the one that wasn’t glowing—the guy. He’d run back to his origin point, but there was no sign of the woman.

I stayed up for another ten minutes, waiting to see if she’d show up too, but she didn’t. When I woke up the next morning, there hadn’t been any further alerts. Maybe the north end of the route was where she lived.

We were back in Grand Lake late Sunday night. I planned to drive about half the Grand Lake University group back to campus. Jody’s parents lived only a few blocks away, so Dayton, Jody and Sean walked over there and to pick up Jody’s car. Julie and Shannon took their own way too.

That left Haley, Travis, Camille, Courtney, and Vaughn riding back to campus in the van with me. It filled all the seats once you included everyone’s luggage. I probably could have adjusted the van to compensate, but I couldn’t show up to the university’s car garage driving any other version of my van than my own.

All it said was “You know what to do,” and underneath that sentence there was a link to a Dropbox folder. I hesitated for a moment and then clicked on it. It opened to a web page that listed only one file in folder. It was called “Exposure.mpv.”

I’d heard of the video format. It only ran on the associated player and only worked once. No one knew who had designed it. The Double V forums were certain it was a known tech genius, but couldn’t agree on who.

Daniel’s bed creaked, and I heard him walk up behind me as I sat at the desk. “Maybe we should get Izzy. It’s only going to play once, and she’s got a great memory for sounds.” Continue reading Faerieland: Part 48→